Saturday, July 4, 2009

Saturday Scar Top Mountain race (edited). 10 miles.

Here a couple of pics from the race-

My son Ben negotiating with me for more watermelon, his 5th piece. I'm excited after today. I raced and won a 12k in the mountains, in my own neighborhood to be exact. When they have a mountain race in your neighborhood at high altitude you're living in a cool place I think. I broke 90 miles for the week at mile 4 of the race and felt awesome. I think this shows a lot in terms of how hard a 100 mile week is for me now. I put a HR cap (surprised?) of 170 (my marathon HR is ~165) on my effort with the option to actually race if I had a chance to win. At mile 2 there is a climb that hits 18% and I held my HR down to under 170 and dropped the field with the exception of Bill Fanselow. I was able to hold him at ~20" until mile 5 when we hit the last big climb before descending for 2 miles to the finish. Having my HR below 170 left me with a full tank and tons of reserve effort(GZ- we have discussed this aspect of HR training). I was holding what felt like marathon effort and I felt very comfortable. So I sprinted, very suddenly, up the hill and elevated my HR immediately to 180 and caught Bill and passed him, holding on to my lead to the finish. The first half mile of the descent went in ~2:25. There is a climb in the last mile that hurt, but other than that this was a tempo run. I'm psyched about two things from today- being able to elevate after 90 miles of solid running (tempo run yesterday during a 20 mile day), and being fit enough aerobically to drop most of a field of runners with a relatively low HR cap. These point straight towards the level of fitness I have right now. Note: I ran 45:35 (6:10 pace)which would have had me beaten by over 2:00 in previous years by true mountain studs like Ames, Batliner and Vail. I simply got lucky with the win today. Partly because of who didn't show up and also the fact that Bill Fanselow is coming off a blown achilles. He's only been training a little bit. He is a mountain stud when he's healthy and has come within 8" of making the US team that goes to the mountain running world championships. So ya, I got lucky. Results.

Awesome, congrats! A win is a win, for sure. You still have to show up, even when the others don't. Outfit...perfect. You're the dude everyone is looking at at the start saying "who's this country boy?", probably can't run a lick! Maybe I need to show up at races with cotton tee's and baggy shorts.

Seriously, you are showing some strong fitness. My only concern with your ability to succeed is with the fitness between your ears. I don't say that to be harsh, and I apologize if it comes across that way. I am stoked you raced today because it gave you a good test - physically, and probably a huge confidence boost mentally.

Thanks BJ and Runcolo. GZ- I'm quite concerned with my mental strength. I have little faith in my ability to persevere at high intensity efforts. I wonder if I can run 2:20 with out hurting :)? I have 100% faith in my body, maybe 50% in my brain. Next week I am starting to ramp up intensity and will be doing harder efforts working in that -5% of race pace range. I think this is partly the key to developing mental strength, that and racing. Yes- I wore the hat.

Wende- You know Benny... he ate until he almost got sick. I think he ate 5 big slices.

Matt- I've been waiting for your response about the mountain races :) It's sort of inevitable don't you think? GZ will start pressuring me soon enough. Bill Fanselow was second and he missed the world's team by 8". Turns out he lives just up the street from me! I think we are going to start running together once he gets healed from an achilles injury. I only beat him because he is jogging 40 miles a week right now! He's the real deal. And yes- the McQueen's are sweet.. I really like the movie. My favorite part that I always rewind and watch over again is when the little forklift (Luigi) changes all four of Lightning's tires in like 4.5 seconds. Cracks me up every time.

I've been telling you for a while to run a trail/mountain race. The sport is pretty big with sponsorship etc. Not only could you go "Dave Mackey" on a bunch of fools, but really enjoy it and yes you have the training grounds.

I haven't seen Cars in a while but have seen it about 75 times. Love that movie. And yes, the part to which you refer is great. Remember one of the "critic's," upon seeing Luigi's quickness, drops his bumper.